Keeping the postal service up & running, one stamp at a time. Usually silly, sometimes cranky, occasionally a mix of the two.

Going Heartless: Received from Canada, China, Indonesia, Ukraine, & the U.S.

Ooh, how about that top row? I love those two cards!

The first card is from Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and part of a swap-bot “Upcycled Cardboard” exchange. The swapper writes:

“I enjoy this swap so much because it’s cheap, recycling, and requires creativity. It’s from snack box, the brand is SMAX. Actually, I don’t really like the taste of this snack, LOL. I hope you’ll like it (I mean the postcard. 🙂 )

I know how she feels! Once you get the idea of using packaging as postcards, you look at your grocery basket in a whole new way!

Snoopy! I always love finding Snoopy in my mail box. That’s from Cindi in Hawaii, and you gotta scroll down & look at all of the cooooool stickers & stamps on the other side.

The second row of cards both came to me due to a swap-bot “Disney postcard” trade. The fireflies are from “The Princess & the Frog,” and the card was sent to me from a swapper in Alberta, Canada, who writes:

“…I’m about 3 hours from Jasper National Park & the Rocky Mountains. It’s my favorite place to go…”

The Toy Story card is from a sender in Chicago, Illinois. This guy left so much white space on the back of the card, I can hear the wind blowing through. He writes:

“I remember seeing this film when it came out in 1999! Take care,”

That’s it: the greeting, then that, then the signature, then an expanse of white space that represents about half or more of the card’s writable area.

If you know swap-bot, you know it’s a ratings-based system, and you may know I cringe every time it’s ratings time on the ‘bot.

Every time I send out something for swap-bot, I go for that heart, the “extra-special” rating that I think should be so easy to achieve, that I don’t understand when I don’t earn it. The same week that the half-written card previously mentioned to me, I received a swap-bot rating for the doubly-free card I sent to Minnesota. It was a heart-less rating. Here’s what I’d like you to do. Look at this card, front & back, and let me know what I should have done to earn that heart. Let’s begin with the swap instructions:

Send 1 free/ad postcard to your 1 partner. Theme of the card can be anything, no offensive though. Senders’s choise. It would be great that the card has some room to write your greetings. Add at least the swap name and your Swap-bot name! Send written and stamped.

Okay, now here is my card, back & front:

Lots of stamps, long substantive note, ink-stamped images & washi tape… what else, then? Should I start taping cash to my postcards, or what? Please do help me out, here!

On the flip side, when it comes to being the person doing the rating, my policy is to err on the side of generosity: I INTEND to give the heart rating, and only withhold it in the rare cases when the sender is clearly hardly straining toward the bare minimum. Like, for instance, on the nearly-empty card I described previously.

Oh, those swap-bot nerves…

Moooooving on…

Bottom row: the book with leaf card came to me via Postcrossing from Chernihiv, Ukraine. The sender tells me that she is a web developer, but in her free time she prefers needlework.

Finally, we come to the terracotta warriors. This comes to me thanks to a Postcrossing Foum Far East to America tag, from a sender in Guangzhou,China. Here is what she has to say:

“This’s Terracotta Warriors, which was established by Qin Shi Huang and listed in UNESCO, is located in Shanxi Province, a famous ancient province in China. This series of postcards is rare, since the seller said this’s only presented to the foreign reporter as a gift. But I send one of them to you and want you to learn more about China. Maybe the color is a little wierd, but it’s acceptable, right? Maybe you should visit there one day!”

I’m so happy the Snoopy Postcard reached you safely. I had saved it aside to send to someone I thought would appreciate it. As I was looking through my stash the other week, I thought of you as soon as I saw it. I’m glad that you like it!

I used to be a member of Swap-Bot but have since deleted my account. I LOVED Swap-Bot very much, but I think the thing that bothered me most was non-raters. I think that was one of the biggest reasons why I decided to leave Swap-Bot. I also understand how you feel about receiving a heart-less rating. I know in the SB forums, a lot of people used to say that they wouldn’t give out hearts for postcard swaps… Which I never understood why?! I feel like people can still go above and beyond with postcard swaps. For me, if I felt like someone followed the swap rules, took the time to read through my profile & write something nice on the postcard I’d give them a 5 & a heart. So if it were me who had received the AD card, I’d have rated you a 5 & a heart. I know some swappers, don’t ever hand out hearts. I guess you could say they are heartless? <— Pun intended.

No, that wasn’t up the last time I looked at their shop! Their postage charge to mail cards is pretty high, so if I’m doing mail order, I wait until I need a lot. The place is about an hour & a half away from me…but there’s nothing else to do in that area–unless you count really good ice cream that is indeed worth a drive! http://www.fru-ta.com/